Stacy Horn

Gross posting alert! I have a cat (FINNEY, the evil one of course) who sometimes raises his butt and pees off the side of the litterbox. Ew, I know. And I’ve had him checked for other issues that might be causing this and he’s fine.

So I devised this litterbox solution. The pee hits these plastic sheets (cut down shower curtains) and into the litterbox.

Of course I regularly have to clean these plastic sheets but that’s easier than cleaning all around the litter box and anything else the pee gets into, like the bath mat, etc.

Cats.  The things we do for love. Ironically, I’m posting this because of a discussion on Echo about people who bring cats to shelters for what are to me and many others inexcusable reasons.

People suck sometimes.  So do cats (I’m looking at you FINNEY PEE-OFF-THE-SIDE CAT).  But I wouldn’t bring abandon a person in a shelter either.

Nicole guessed, and Margaret confirmed, that the bird in the picture below is an American Robin. Here are some American pigeons, watching the American taxi below.

I went up on my roof to see if I could take a picture that captures the loveliness of today.  Is it this guy, who was cheap/squawking at me?  What kind of bird is that anyway?  Does anyone know?  I should ask my friend Margaret who knows these things.  I’m going to show you the uncropped version so you can see how big he is.

First, the cropped version (scroll down for uncropped and more photos).

Uncropped.  Christ.  He’s a monster bird, isn’t he?

But maybe this view looking down Perry towards the Hudson River (which you can see!) says Spring more. For me it evokes, “God I’m so lucky to live in this city.”  I mean look at it!  Our city is beautiful.

Could she have a more Plain Jane name without being named Jane?? Everyone is talking about her.

If you haven’t seen the video yet and don’t know why, watch it here now.  Do it.  You’ll thank me.

And then read an excellent analysis of why we love her here.

I cried when watching it, both for Susan, for all of us, and for this part of the lyrics in the song she sang:

“But there are dreams that cannot be

And there are storms we cannot weather …”

I never thought I would see the day when lyrics like that would resonate with me.  I guess if you’re lucky to live long enough it’s hard to escape.  It’s just that I always thought that no matter what happened to me in life, I would recover.  

I didn’t know that there are things that you never recover from.  Life goes on, and you can even be happy again, but it really surprises me to learn that there is such a thing as permanent damage and the effect on the rest of your life from the scarring is much more significant that I ever realized.  I wish I could go back and apologize to all the people I thought were such wusses.

I wanted to thank the bookstores who hosted readings for my book. They all treated me so well, and were so kind and supportive. Their efforts of my behalf really did my heart good.

It’s hard to get people into the store to attend these readings (unless the author is Steven King or David Sedaris) and each time I showed up I expected to see only one or two people, but each store managed to pull in a great crowd.

The picture is of R. J. Julia Booksellers, in Madison, CT.  I also read at Brookline Booksmith and Borders Books & Music in Bailey’s Crossroads, VA.  Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

If you live in these places, PLEASE patronize these stores!